Sunday, July 09, 2006

social message

Church this morning was good and bad. Good in the sense that it was very well done. The message was clear, easy to remember, and had application. The people warm and friendly. When I asked my family what they thought they all rated it very high.

BUT - I always have to make things more complicated. The message was about marriage. Throughout it the speaker referenced Scripture. But I use the word "speaker" over "preacher" intentionally. As said, the message was about marriage referencing the Gospel as opposed to the Gospel referencing marriage.

The point was how we can build better relationships. A message that could have been told by any good counselor. In this case it would be a Christian counselor since Scripture was mentioned. But He didn't talk about the power of God to change our lives use marriage as an application of that. This is what I would expect from a preacher.

Bottom line, I'm disappointed. There may be some offsetting positives in the balance of the church but I think we will look at other communities before we try to dig deeper there.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Rick,

Have you heard the radio show Issues Etc.? It airs on KFUO in St. Louis, and the audio is streamed live and archived at kfuo.org. Pastor Todd Wilken, the host, has a diagnostic for listening to sermons. First, you count the number of times Christ is mentioned (He's often almost entirely absent!). Then you make note of whether Jesus is the object or subject of the verbs. (Is He doing the action, or are we?) Finally, if He's the subject of the verbs, you note what verbs Jesus is doing. (Is he saving and forgiving? Or is he encouraging and modeling behavior?) It's amazing how hard it is to find a sermon from a popular preacher who actually preaches the Gospel that Christ forgives sins.

reftagger